Blindshot Page 8

  There had never been a good event for the family at Cowansville’s hospital. This wasn’t negative thinking on her part, purely fact. This was the Carignan family’s hospital. There had been her sprained wrist, from a fall in the woods. There had been Jack’s broken fingers, on two separate occasions. There had been Noah’s terrible flu that developed into pneumonia. There had been the time Jack fell out of a tree, hitting his head on a hard root. They’d taken him to Emergency, white as a ghost, limp and unmoving with concussion, and spent the night there, observing him. And now there was this, a shooting, of all unimaginable things. She hoped to walk into the waiting room and find her boys with big smiles, Paul sitting with them, busting up with the giggles and the pride of a deep, dark prank well done.

  It was a crazy thought. Her mind raced. Her nerves were out of control. Whatever hopeful, inventive scenario came to her, it wasn’t what she would find.

  The bright white lights and the smell of bleach of the hospital corridors brought her back to her senses. She presented herself at the Emergency desk, and when the clerk looked up at her, she said her name, her husband’s name and her reason for being there. The clerk answered her and pointed. Catherine came to another desk with yet another clerk. She again gave her information and the purpose of her visit. This clerk led Catherine to nearby doors.

  “Through here,” she said, with eyes so empathetic Catherine’s heart fell. What could she have known to look at Catherine that way? Catherine followed her.

  The corridor widened into a waiting zone, with wooden benches, vending machines filled with colourful, packaged snacks, soda pop, instant coffee. The people scattered around all had the same anxious, tired look of those who are bored, worried, and feeling absolutely useless. The clerk presented the space with an extended arm, and backed away like a stage performer finishing her last dramatic act in a play. Exit stage right.

  It was a nightmare. Catherine scanned the large room. A man and his three children dug in their pockets to gather change at a vending machine. She only noticed them when one of the kids let several coins clatter to the floor. Everyone kept their voices quiet. Even the children whispered to their parents, who bent for them to whisper in their ears. An elderly couple waited quietly, holding each other.

  Where were her children. As Catherine moved into the room, walking past a thick metal-plated column, she spotted her boys sitting tightly together, despite plenty of room, wrapped in blue hospital blankets. Their clothes were muddied and darkened with blood. Their faces, arms, hands and hair were patched with their father’s blood. They stirred when they saw their mom, like nightmarish dolls waking up from a slumber. They were obviously exhausted, drained of everything. Catherine rushed to them, arms out, and pressed them both hard against her. They melted, so much that when they let go of themselves to hold her, she almost fell.

  “My sweethearts, my sweethearts,” she said, hugging them even tighter.

  And then she froze in place. Anne was standing there, arms full of snacks and drinks from the vending machines. She was striking, so tall and lean, dressed from head to toe in high-end brands, a dark sweater hugging her figure, a scarf flowing from her shoulders. Perfect hair and makeup.

  “Hi,” said Anne, simply.

  “Hi,” answered Catherine, involuntarily mirroring Anne’s soft tone.

  “You made it,” said Anne.

  “Of course,” said Catherine, dryly. She was too weak and fatigued to react otherwise to what seemed like Anne’s casual welcome to a cocktail party. “My husband was shot,” added Catherine.

  “Yes, he’s in surgery,” said Anne.

  “What happened?” said Catherine.

  “I don’t know. The boys don’t know,” explained Anne, awkwardly. “We weren’t there. Well, Noah was in the house, but Jack was off in the woods. I left for the evening, I mean, there was this thing with my mother.” Anne realized Catherine was overwhelmed by the details. Anne smiled at her.

  “Why don’t you sit?” suggested Anne, with compassion.

  Noah approached Anne and took a chocolate bar from her arms. Anne remembered she was holding a heap of snacks and moved toward the boys.

  Catherine realized she was staring at Anne. It was surreal to rush to this hospital and be confronted by Paul’s girlfriend, evidently bringing support and comfort to her children. Catherine watched Jack and Noah return silently to the bench, sitting instinctively close together again. She was so proud of how they always behaved with each other, a real team, everything brothers should be, and this unfortunate moment was no exception.

  Anne dropped the other snacks into the boys’ laps. Catherine could not help but feel envy that she hadn’t been the one to do that. Yet it was so inconsequential. A few bags of chips and some chocolate would not remove the bullet from her husband and would not take the boys’ worries away.

  “The hospital called you?” asked Catherine.

  “Nurse McGuire. She knows,” said Anne, meaning her relationship with Paul.

  Catherine nodded to her, then looked away and stayed quiet. Anne looked back at her. “I can go, if you like, now that you’re here?”

  “No, it’s fine. You should stay,” said Catherine, without energy.

  Both women let silence dominate. The boys were silent too. They waited. Anne looked again at Catherine, feeling sympathetic toward her. Anne knew, from Paul, that they had meant and continued to mean a great deal to each other, on some level. She accepted that but did not feel in a position to have any expectations. She also knew, from what Paul had told her, that Catherine had not meant to lose Paul, nor had Paul meant to lose Catherine. It had happened over time. One of those things.

  The quiet broke. A little girl across the room dropped her juice container, and it spilled out on the floor. She cried. Her mother picked up the nearly empty container, dropped it into a white metal garbage can and consoled the girl. Nurse Peggy McGuire appeared from the nearest door to them, walked around the mess as if it was nothing out of the ordinary, and scanned the room. Everyone looked at her.

  Her gaze locked onto the boys and Catherine. She approached. Nurse McGuire was clearly confused about whom to address. Her eyes darted between Anne and Catherine. Rather than saying anything too quickly, the nurse smiled at the boys.

  “I’m Catherine Carignan,” said Catherine, surprising herself with her spontaneous response. She hadn’t often used that name, not in recent years, not anytime during her marriage. In her professional career, she had consistently used Martelle, her maiden name. The nurse turned toward her. Catherine almost regretted attracting her attention, scared of what she would hear next.

  “Your husband is out of surgery. Dr. Rubens did the operation. He’s the best. Luckily Dr. Rubens was here when your husband was brought in, and in the nick of time. I don’t mind telling you that your boys are very brave.”

  Catherine ran her hands through Noah’s matted hair. Noah normally would have squirmed, but he was too exhausted for that.

  “Dr. Rubens was saying that if Mr. Carignan hadn’t been brought in when he was, he wouldn’t have had a chance. There was too much blood loss,” continued Nurse McGuire. “My name’s Peggy, by the way.”

  “Where was he hit? Did they get the bullet out?” asked Catherine.

  “The bullet went in the lower abdomen, to the side, through part of his kidney, and out the lower back. There was no bullet to take out.”

  “No … ?” said Catherine, trying to process.

  “How is Paul now?” asked Anne.

  Catherine was frustrated by the question, as it made her realize she was not the only one in the conversation. She wanted to be the one to ask it. She looked at Anne, then back to Peggy, waiting for the answer.

  “He’s stable, but critical. He’s not leaving anytime soon, so that’s something you have to prepare for. He’s not out of the woods yet.”

  “Can I talk to
Dr. Rubens?” asked Catherine, taking ownership of the situation again.

  “Afraid not. Dr. Rubens has left the hospital. He was at the end of a long series of operations, honestly, and like I said, he just happened to be here, luckily for you. He’ll be back early in the morning to check on your husband. That’s when we’ll really know how it’s going anyway.”

  “We want to see dad,” said Jack, on behalf of himself and Noah.

  The nurse scanned all their worried faces. She smiled again.

  “Come with me. We’ll make an exception.”

  They all followed the nurse through a swinging door, into the corridors of the intensive care ward. The smell of bleach and medicines was more intense here, and it sickened Catherine’s tired body. She figured it was having the same effect on her boys. Anne looked frustratingly fresh and energetic, so Catherine kept her out of view as much as possible. They came to a glass-walled area, where she saw patients being cared for by clusters of emergency ward staff. There was a teenage boy in one bed with terrible wounds across his face and upper body, his lower body fully wrapped. It looked to Catherine as though he’d been in a car accident or a fire.

  Jack and Noah stayed tightly together, between Catherine and Anne. They were all scanning the many patients, looking for Paul. Catherine spotted a male patient, around Paul’s age and size, but his face was very drawn and pale. Hair pushed back. An oxygen mask covering his mouth and chin. Tubes running in all directions around him. Catherine could not take her eyes off him. It was Paul. This wounded creature on this hospital bed, fighting for its life, was her husband Paul.

  The boys ran to his bedside. Nurse McGuire motioned for them to slow down, but they ignored that. Jack and Noah pressed themselves against the cold metal edges of the hospital bed, gazing at their father, their faces incredulous and sad.

  Catherine and Anne followed.

  There were no words that seemed appropriate. Paul was not listening. Unavailable. They felt that. So, they all stared quietly. Catherine leaned close to Jack and Noah.

  “Your father is going to be okay. He’s tough. He’s always been tough.”

  “He doesn’t look tough right now, Mom. He looks really sick,” said Noah.

  Catherine kissed Noah, knowing that her younger boy was almost always right. A wiser and better observer than any of them. Catherine fought back tears, not wanting to upset her boys any further. She forced a smile.

  Jack turned from his father and walked back the way they had come. He walked at a good pace, not turning back. Catherine figured he needed some time alone. She held Noah’s hand, keeping him from running after his brother. Nurse McGuire gave Catherine a sympathetic smile and comforting wink.

  “Okay,” she said, implying their visit needed to end. “I suggest you go home, all of you, and try to rest. He’ll be under close observation, and we’ll let you know if there’s anything.”

  With the presence of someone who had helped many loved ones through similar circumstances, Nurse McGuire took the lead down the corridors, back to the waiting room. Catherine, Noah and Anne followed without a word.

  “Come back in the morning,” said Nurse McGuire to Catherine. “Get a little bit of rest until then,” she said.

  Catherine thanked her, as she spotted Jack alone across the room. He was leaning against the wall next to a wide window, staring out. Noah ran to him, prodded him to move, to react, and when he wouldn’t, Noah crouched down on the floor next to him. Nurse McGuire observed their behaviour with apparent admiration.

  “Deputy Chief Doran was here earlier,” said Nurse McGuire. “He helped them get your husband in.”

  “I didn’t know.”

  “He said he’d want to talk to your sons again, to get more information on what happened.”

  “Of course.”

  “Please take care. We’ll see you tomorrow.”

  With that, Nurse McGuire left toward the inner offices.

  Catherine and Anne looked at each other, neither quite sure what to do next.

  “It’s almost morning,” said Anne, looking at her watch and the night through the window.

  “It is,” said Catherine, biting her lip nervously, then catching herself. “Why don’t you come back to the house with us? I have to get the boys cleaned up. They need rest. We need rest. No point your driving off just to come back in a few hours.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “You know the house. We’ve got room. Yes, I’m sure.”

  Catherine and Anne moved together toward Jack. Noah stood up and pulled his brother from the wall.

  They all left together, the image of Paul, immobile in a hospital bed, haunting all of their steps. The night outside, as they looked for the cars in the parking lot, welcomed them into its cold embrace.

  Tom Doran got out of Paul’s black Audi. As he considered where to leave the keys, Mark Hanes, Sergeant with Beaufort Police, shouted out to him from the recovered police pick-up that had been left in the road when Tom helped the Carignan boys.

  “See anything?” asked Hanes.

  Tom walked back to the pick-up and reached in for a flashlight. “Not yet, no.”

  “Where’s the Sûreté?” asked Hanes. “Are they coming to the party?”

  “Yeah, they will. But’s it’s our show. You know Bernier, he’ll keep the Sûreté du Québec out of this at all cost. He’ll give them information, but only enough to show we’ve got things under control.”

  “We might throw them a bone with Edison’s coke bust on the north side of the county, but this sort of thing stays with us as much as possible,” said Tom.

  Hanes nodded, his eyes scanning the ground for anything unusual. “I know the drill. Chief Bernier decides, I’ve heard it a million times. The fewer outsiders the better. The fewer people in the know, the better control for Beaufort. You think that’ll change, Brooder?”

  “Not anytime soon,” said Tom, “and don’t call me Brooder.”

  “Too much history and this is no man’s land, right?” said Hanes.

  “Seems so,” confirmed Tom. “You won’t find any casings here, Mark.”

  Hanes seemed perplexed. “Oh, no, right. Shooter was further out?”

  “Yeah,” muttered Tom.

  He flicked on the flashlight and moved through the parking lot. Mark Hanes watched him from the truck. Tom swept the parking lot with the intense white beam. Nothing but gravel. Tom wasn’t sure what he was looking for. He walked to the edge of the parking lot where it met with the lawn. He followed that line, lighting his way with the flashlight. He spotted a break where car tires ramped up onto the grass earlier, or maybe in the other direction. He followed the curving tracks up the garden slope. As he moved higher, and for the second time that evening, he looked over at the looming Carignan home. A monumental black silhouette cutting through an indigo sky.

  The tracks led up the grass embankment, away from the house. Tom followed them, taking care to shine the light continuously along their form. They curved slightly back, toward the west end of the house. This was a good distance away, the house being so long, and the tracks went beyond the corner and on to the pitch-black forest wall, near the woodpile.

  Where the tracks finally stopped, Tom noticed a good deal of matted grass. He bent, put his hand to it and came up with blood. His hands were already tainted with darkened blood from the Audi steering wheel and from having helped move Paul out of the Audi at the hospital. Tom realized he was likely standing where Paul had been shot. It would be best to return in daylight, but it was good that he’d been able to check it out right away.

  His adrenaline had been pumping ever since driving the Carignan boys to the hospital with their wounded father, so he wouldn’t have slept even if he had gone home earlier. He would have been lying there, staring at his unfinished ceiling in his half-renovated church-home, thinking of what could possibly have happen
ed here tonight.

  He turned slowly, shining the light out, full circle on the spot where Paul Carignan had been shot. Shot by whom? Tom had learned from Dr. Rubens, the operating surgeon, that the bullet hadn’t been recovered but had transpierced its target, whether intentionally or not. From a forensic and evidentiary point of view, a bullet would have been useful, but there was none in Paul Carignan and likely none to be found here in the darkness.

  However Paul had been shot, this was where he had fallen, near the woodpile. This was also where the Carignan boys had managed to put their father in the back seat of their car and drive it down the embankment, through the front gardens and back onto Van Kleet, where Tom had intercepted them. At fifteen, it was possible that Paul had begun to give his eldest son basic driving lessons. It wasn’t uncommon in Beaufort for young teenagers to drive off-road vehicles, motorcycles, and farm machinery, though none was legal. Tom was impressed with what those two boys had attempted, though he wouldn’t be able say this out loud to them.

  “Fuck me,” he said to himself instead, thinking of those boys and their Herculean effort. He walked past the woodpile to the edge of the pitch-black forest. He shined the flashlight directly, waist high, at the closest trees, and followed the beam, stepping forward slowly. If he were lucky, he would find a chip in the bark of a tree, right at that height or slightly lower, due to the projectile’s arc. If he were really lucky, he’d find a bullet sunk into the tree.

  Tom chuckled at his presumption. The odds of finding a bullet in the dark, on a slope, next to a forest, were slimmer than the finest scalpel Dr. Rubens had likely used in the procedure. Tom walked back to the woodpile, inspecting a few scattered logs Paul had likely been holding and then dropped when he was shot. He looked at the piles of logs, bending to inspect them with his flashlight. There was dried blood on them. Tom thought of the pain Paul must have endured, perhaps while aware of his circumstances as his capacities diminished and he collapsed. Visualizing this brought Tom back to a painful incident of his own, one that had familiarized him with the burning sensation of a bullet penetrating skin and muscle.